


The consequences of boredom

by Avbi



Category: Ai no Kusabi
Genre: Abusive Relationships, All the wonderful-ness of canon Amoi and its inhabitants, Dark, Iason being a creepy manipulative bastard, M/M, Mental Anguish, Raoul wants to know who performed a common-sense-sectomy on you, Riki is no angel either, Twisted Morality, like: really twisted, mention of violence, semi-explicit depiction of non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 08:24:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11870418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avbi/pseuds/Avbi
Summary: There are evenings when Iason cannot stop musing, Riki cannot stand his own skin anymore, and Raoul cannot stop worrying.This piece explores the same evening in Eos from two different points of view, and the dangers boredom poses. The setting is after the Miguel incident, during Riki's punishment (house arrest). Do not be fooled by the rating: it is mostly musings and character exploration with a tiny smudge of erotica thrown in.I apologise for the possible English mistakes (point them to me and you'll have my gratitude).Constructive criticism is more than welcome (tell me what I am doing wrong and I'll be even more grateful, I need it).Enjoy!





	The consequences of boredom

**Author's Note:**

> The ethics and morality Iason expresses are, naturally, not the author's and they are supposed to be twisted and disturbing.  
> The piece might be edited if it bores too many people into throwing coconuts at the author. If you are bored: please tell me.  
> Cepheid variables are variable stars (usually young yellow giants) that pulsate with a precise frequency, what is more their luminosity and the period of their pulsation are very closely related, thus they are used to calculate the distance of far galaxies or other stellar clusters they are part of.

Complacency and boredom were the most subtle of poisons.  
Their slow grind was like the wear of the ocean: it could make mistakes become acceptable, then desirable, until, before realisation hit, the stone under one’s feet had turned into sand and the world was slowly sinking. They were treacherous too, especially in a city like Tanagura, with rules as rigid as the metal skeletons of its towers, but far less pleasant to observe in action.

Before his eyes Raoul took a sip of wine and Iason found himself briefly thinking about conversations they never really had before moving one of his pawns ahead without much thought for strategy.  
He could still recover later.

Iason had always known about the dangers boredom posed, maybe because he seemed to somehow feel it more keenly than most his brethren, probably due to an optimisation for leadership roles. That was what he had told himself, at least, but now he doubted that such had ever been the case. Or that it his old belief could fully explain the anomaly.  
Even more frustrating was to feel his thoughts clinging to it. Yet another pointless human flaw. Incorrect models should be let go of without pointless emotional attachment. He could almost hear Raoul arguing for that.  
For all that he might have admired his friend’s mind Iason could not help but feel the bitter irony of such a statement made by a Blondie. Then again: Amoi was running on a circle as virtuous in nature as it was vicious in practice. It would probably outlive most other societies of the Salinas galaxy.  
As for complacency: he had been cured of that, sadly.

Around the table his friend and he currently occupied the salon buzzed with quiet conversations. It was always illuminating to pay some attention to the noise. Wether you heard what others wanted you to hear or what escaped close circles of whispering figures it mattered little: in both cases the new piece of information could reveal much to a discerning mind. Yet today Iason could not bring himself to do so. To be fair it had been a while since he last did.  
Since well before the last incident.  
Was it boredom yet again?  
Another possibility crossed his mind: shame. Still, why should he feel it? For his lack of control? The signs on his pet’s skin had faded, Riki could very well stand and go about his business, sadly for other pets and furnitures alike, and it had always been his duty to bear those marks anyway.  
No, that could not be a source of shame. Or, at least, it should not be.  
Of late his brain seemed fond of conjuring ludicrous new ideas. Maybe he truly was damaged, after all. Exploration of new.. concepts meant nothing without control and that was likely the only solution: keeping his control, regaining his control, was paramount. Especially since a core pillar of it had collapsed burying complacency in its rubbles.  
The thought wasn’t as bitter as it should have been.

Raoul’s horse jumped over Iason’s rook in a contemptuous arch, without really succeeding in breaking through the haze of the Elite’s thoughts.  
“If you didn’t wish to play you should have told me so.”  
With a slight smile Iason moved his queen, elegantly knocking his friend’s piece down and giving no sign of having acknowledged Raoul’s waspish tone. The recent topics of gossip had made his friend definitely more confrontational than usual. Iason answered with the first platitude crossing his mind.  
“Are you worried Raoul?”  
Suddenly green eyes were staring in his, their gaze as hard as a blow.  
“Yes.”  
The single word hung between them, still Iason pretended not to have understood what it meant. Raoul’s tower advanced in a sharp line to threaten one of Iason’s last pawns.  
“You should not be, Raoul. You are doing terrific.”

Only when his fingers left the piece's round head Raoul answered, his voice low enough not to carry beyond Iason’s ears, but firm in its censure and veined with worry.  
“Lately I find myself wondering if you even know what you want, and what you risk.”

This time the words cut through the haze of Iason’s elucubrations like a knife.  
There was an instant of stillness, a dark pulsation in Iason’s head, that made his every thought turn sour. An infuriating wave of irritation kept rising and rising, like the ocean’s tides, in his mind, fuelled by the knowledge that not only he had no true answer to give, but this rage itself was yet again another flaw, another imperfection.  
Once he could have told himself that all this was nothing but a result of allowing a mongrel, a chaotic factor, in his household, but now he didn’t have that luxury anymore.  
His lips twisted in a sour mien, barely visible but painfully obvious to himself, and he was about to answer when Gideon’s perfunctory laugh rose from a nearby table.

It was like seeing the pulsation period of a Cepheid variable: so familiarly false to put everything back into perspective. This was nothing more than another game, more unneeded warnings, and a pointless argument that neither of them wanted to have then and there.  
Iason smiled calmly.  
“At the moment just another glass of wine, Raoul.”  
Raoul’s lips pursed and his rook cut behind Iason’s queen and pawn to checkmate his king.  
Of course: complacent boredom could also loose you chess matches.

 

 

***

 

The walls were closing on him again. As if the faceless crowd chattering in the Atrium had entered the apartment and was surrounding him from all sides, inescapable, sneering. As if they were any fucking better than him! As if he couldn’t have beaten every single one to a bloody pulp! As if they knew anything!  
Eos was more rotten the the worst Stout. Even breathing its air for too long was like drowning in one of those puddles covered in petrol that made the streets of Ceres particularily nasty after the rain.  
Fuck this, fuck this all.  
Moving to the balcony had helped shit. Not that he could have done more. Not even the Garden was a possibility now, not after the incident. Fuck them all. Them and the rotten Guardians.  
He could feel the eyes of the cameras lining the walls of the apartment on his skin, like the viewfinder of a Darksman, like the bruises left by Midas’ police.  
Riki’s foot slammed against the railing but even the small satisfaction of pain and the tortured wail of metal became a grim reminder as soon the vibrations reached the ring encircling his prick,  
His mouth tasted like a fucking’ rotten ashtray.  
Oh: he would beg, now. How he would beg! For anything.  
Iason would not break him at once, no, that would not be fun for the twisted bastard. He would do it slowly, taking his time, letting him notice every single fuckin’ step of the way. The realisation, even if an old one, had Riki seethe haplessly and walk the whole length of the terrance once more, with growingly nervous steps. The air felt both too hot and too cold on his skin, and his hands keep opening and closing in an almost spasmodic rhythm, his arms slightly bent at the elbow as if to beckon an enemy forward. What he would do now to hit someone! If he hadn’t known that searching for the door would just mean another, even worse, defeat he would have been friggin’ running to it.  
At least the guards made for a good fight.  
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.  
At times like his very skin felt too tight, yet another prison.

“Are you trying to carve a groove in the concrete?”

Riki turned sharply, gritting his teeth. Normally the cold voice behind him would feel like a blade pressing on his back, dangerous, threatening, but now it was almost a friggin’ relief to hear it. Something would happen at least.  
Yet another thing to be ashamed of.

With a quick movement Riki buried both hands in the pockets of his trousers, clenching his fists with enough strength to hurt.  
His scoff sounded more desperate than dismissive to his own ears. Fuck it!  
Iason walked towards him, his steps so assured, so fucking deliberate; every footfall an insufferably smug challenge that he would have taken once, maybe should still have taken, even now that he knew better. Old habits and impotent rage kept his gaze fixed on the blondies’s boots so he felt rather than see long fingers suddenly twisting in his hair and pulling his head back, forcing his eyes to meet Iason’s.  
He growled. An openly raging sound that had not left his throat ever since he had come back to Eos.

It tasted of both defeat and triumph.

One blond eyebrow raised over cold eyes.

The fact that Iason’s hand fell down from his hair, without pulling, to simply gesture with such fucking elegant assurance toward the open balcony door, hurt more than any physical pain. Sure the rotten fucker knew. Had he dragged him by the hair, by the fucking cock dammit! It would have hurt less.  
To his shame he followed the unspoken command nonetheless, with something similar to sickening eagerness guiding his steps.  
He should have hated this, feared this far more than he did: hell, he could still feel his body tearing!  
Was it really better than wallowing like a piece of waste in a room?  
No, he would not fuckin’ answer that.

The door closed behind his shoulders with a quick snap and, suddenly, Iason’s hands were on him, sliding from his shoulders to his hips, opening his clothes, familiarly rapacious in their movements.  
Yet this time, for the first time since that hellish night after the only soiree he had ever been part of, Riki felt his own arms shot up, pulling and pushing against the deceptively elegant lines of the Blondie’s body.  
Oh, he knew this was pointless, at best. All he could do, he had ever done, was so fucking pointless that he would have laughed if he were still able to do so. Still it felt good to push against Iason, to fight him for every gesture, even though he might as well still be kicking the rotten wall for all the good it did. Not that he really expected it to wok.. Or, to his humiliation, even really wanted it to.  
A flicker od long fingers and the ring started closing like a vice around him, tearing a scream from the mongrel’s throat. Yet Riki did not stop resisting.  
This time the Blondie didn’t tie his hands his hands, of late he rarely did. Honestly: there had been no need to. No, this time Iason let him struggle almost until exhaustion, let him burn through all his forces and resistance before pushing him down when the pain of the constricting ring became too much for him to bear.  
Then it was only burning pleasure, so keen that it turned into agony.  
His eyes loosing their focus, the bite of the ring shaking with maddening vibrations, a merciless force pinning him to the mattress, and the cotton sheets burning his joints with every violent shift he attempted. When Iason entered him, quickly, oh so quickly, the pain was almost a respite, even though a far too brief one.  
Tears stung Riki’s lashes as pleasure burnt his consciousness like a cigarette going through fabric.  
Exhaustion made the air hard to breathe and dulled the corner of everything well before he lost himself to traitorous, mindless, ecstasy with a hoarse shout. Again and again.  
Until his thought were nothing more than shreds of paper scattering in the wind.

He didn’t really kew when it was over, Riki just found himself shivering, one of his hands thrown carelessly to the side and twitching feebly on Iason’s skin. Later he would tell himself he didn’t really feel it, that it was merely an accident, but for now the Blondie’s flesh felt cool against his own, almost pleasant.. Fuck, he was too tired to think, to care, to do anything but lay there tethering on the brink of consciousness, hoping that tiredness would win over shame.  
Only Iason’s mute presence at his side anchored him to reality.  
Then, after a while, the Elite spoke, his voice as cold as space.  
“You sorely needed to calm down.”  
“No, I need to get the fuck out of here.”  
At first he seemed to be parroting the fucking machine he was talking to in a hoarse whisper, then his voice broke.  
“I.. this.. I cannot!”

 

 

***

 

Riki’s words were unexpected. In the darkness of this chamber, near an almost insensate pet, Iason allowed himself to blink in surprise before a hand, a hand so warm, so alive with blood running under the skin, closed around his own.  
He found himself briefly pondering what it would feel like if he could do more than sense its presence. For humans such touches seemed to carry a different meaning, something profound, it must have had to do with their biochemistry. Streams of oxytocin being released by the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland in response to impulses that helped consolidate bonds as a social specie.  
For him it should not be even that, merely an invasion of his space.

“I cannot… I…I beg you..”  
Clearly Riki didn’t know what he was saying. Iason doubted he even really realised he was talking. Even now, with his surface obedience in place like an armour, the mongrel still jealousy kept his thoughts to himself, let alone such vulnerabilities.  
Riki’s fingers pressed with more strength agains his. if it had been anyone else in another moment Iason would have laughed at such a pathetic attempt at gaining his favour and would have slapped the offending limb away, but there was something unexpected in the broken voice coming from his side. Something that made him focus to hear every fragment of the barely whispered words.  
Curiosity. Surely it was just curiosity that had him listen so intently. Curiosity and the odd, broken, tone of his pet’s ruined voice.  
“I need to do something… I.. This.. Here is fuckin’ killing me.”  
If he had thought that Riki had a chance of remembering this Iason would have answered that he already had duties to perform, but right now such an answer rang hollow even in thoughts. As it maybe should, after all they both knew that much. He had made sure of it.  
Slowly the Blondie’s right hand moved to press gently on the side of his pet’s head, touching his burning temples where locks of raven hair, damp with sweat, framed his face.  
A pointless act, a weakness that one of them would not remember and the other would hold as close and hidden as one of his organs, yet the touch almost felt right in some hidden human recess of Iason’s mind that didn’t understand the dangers of such abnormal behaviour.  
“We shall see about that. Sleep now.”

The answer, unusually gentle, seemed to calm Riki and the mongrel soon slipped into unconsciousness.  
Iason allowed himself to stay for the rest of the night, perfectly still, watching his pet’s chest rise and fall and his eyes move under closed lids, chasing dreams that he would never see or know. Dreams he should not envy.  
After a few hours the man’s lips started to tremble and his body tensed. Nightmares, most likely.  
Slowly Iason shifted his position to surround Riki’s shoulder with an arm and lifted his torso to hold him against his own chest. A stupid, pointless, action born of both curiosity and the odd attachment to the man that kept plaguing him.  
Still it seemed to work; the mongrel almost nuzzled against his skin and relaxed once more with a trembling breath of relief.  
The Blondie’s eyes focused on his pet’s face once more. As much as rage and intensity suited Riki’s features there was something in seeing him so relaxed that tugged at Iason’s brain as much as Jupiter’s call.  
At least the man had stopped calling for Guy. The thought was as irksome and sudden as a jolt of electricity, but still twisted Iason’s lips in a half-smile both bitter and amused.

Once he would have simply thought that piece of Ceres trash forgotten, after all a bit of conditioning could go a long way.  
Now he knew such was not the case.  
Now he didn’t even know wether to laugh at the weakness of human nature, comforted at its weakest by the very cause of its nightmares, or at his own, conflicting, incomplete one, trying to balance between two opposite drives while fully understanding neither.

The thought was disturbing, almost familiar by now, but disturbing nonetheless.  
He had clearly relaxed too much.

Control. He had the duty towards himself to keep control. It would not do to loose it again, most of all not before his pet’s eyes, and not in this way.  
Rage was justifiable, part and parcel of their roles, this was not.  
Some things were better hidden, they belonged to the darkness and the unspoken, where their shame should remain unrevealed.

Slowly Iason let go of the warm body in his arms, careful not to wake Riki, and rose from the bed, already feeling the splash of heat left by the mongrel’s body cooling on his chest with something akin to meaningless regret.

Cal was likely waiting beyond the door, they all had duties to perform.

Still, even as he dressed himself, Iason kept ruminating over what he could do for his pet rather than what would need his attention in the performance of his duties. He waved the worry away: a simple matter of optimisation, solve this now and be free of it.  
Besides he already had an idea.

After all Katze not only could be counted on, but already knew Riki and his value, and Apatia would both make the isolation his pet obviously needed more complete and less hard to notice, to bear, if interspaced by duties.  
Naturally Riki would have to ask again. Differently, this time to remember it, to feel an obligation. He would never know when Iason had started working on this arrangement, after all. He would only know when it was time for him to leave Eos.  
Making a pet leave Eos and establish him alone in Apatia.

Such a solution would be hard to pull, but, after all, he had bowed down to the rules dictated by Orphe far more than he had planned to. It was high time to remind his colleagues that he would not be censored in the handling of his own household, not to this point at least. His reputation might have lost some of its shine in the upper echelon, but he still held enough power to force their hand.  
That was all that mattered, in Amoi like in every other place really, there would be no affection lost there.  
Raoul would be utterly horrified too, of course. Then again: Am’s own reputation was hardly spotless. Passion, even if for science and the useful, was not seen as a laudable trait in Tanagura.

There was another angle to be considered too: the incident that had earned Riki the punishment currently making him so difficult could nonetheless help in persuading even Aisha to grant Iason the permissions he needed.  
In the end a man far away from Eos could hardly tarnish it for its residents.  
A force for chaos was better isolated, the further away the better.

Logic, logic and control had to be the only reasons for his actions, especially now that he knew they could very well not be.  
After all it was his duty as a Master to ensure his pet was well cared for, as much as it was his duty to keep him in line.  
As an added benefit, after having washed the mongrel’s mouth with vinegar for so long even the tiniest amount of sugar would seem all the sweeter to him. That could be used in moulding his thoughts without breaking his mind.  
Yes, this was a good idea, not without its risks, but they were far outweighed by the possible benefits

Invisible chains would not be any less heavy, but might prove more suited for Riki since the mongrel had proved himself weaker to pleasure than pain, to responsibility than fear. To have him hold his own leash, only to an extent naturally, might yield positive results, make Riki invested in his position, maybe even persuade him to cut the tether that still held his thoughts in Ceres and transfer such energies and loyalty to Iason himself.  
Much better than the simplistically brutal solutions he had been … very strongly advised to take.  
Never that.  
Iason told himself that had been his pride speaking.

Yes, those were good reasons to put this plan into motion, much better than pointless, meaningless, yearnings and illogical nonsense.  
Adjusting his gloves Iason sighed.  
Now, if only he could honestly still tell himself that they were the only ones he had considered, the only ones which had sparked the thought, everything would be much easier.  
Yet he could not, not anymore.  
So much for boredom.


End file.
